If you are new to chatting, the three major players in the market are AIM, Yahoo and Microsoft (what market are they not part of?). While AIM remains at the top of the mountain (offering great integration for MobileMe customers), rival Yahoo is making it harder for users to stay attached to AIM’s service. For those who aren’t completely satisfied with what AIM has to offer, Yahoo! Messenger is a great alternative or supplement and is a bit more robust, with support for adding users of Microsoft’s MSN Messenger service.

Yahoo has been vocal about its dedication to the iPhone platform, and its support is appreciated and apparent. Unlike AIM, Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone also supports sending/receiving photos via your built-in camera. It also exists as a free application, and isn’t cluttered with ads like AIM’s free counterpart. Several unique features of Yahoo! Messenger are also supported, including its popular “Buzz!” feature. In true iPhone style, you activate it by simply shaking your phone.

If you are someone who enjoys chatting with users who do not use either service, Yahoo! Messenger also features the ability to send messages to mobile users over SMS, saving iPhone users from SMS charges (similar to AIM).

Having used both AIM and Yahoo! Messenger on my iPhone, I’m a bit biased towards Yahoo’s offering. With better support for seamlessly moving between mobile and desktop use (actually forcing me to sign off my desktop), this keeps me from “losing” messages in one location, unlike AIM. During testing, I kept inadvertently leaving AIM “signed on” on my iPhone and messages were being routed there, instead of showing up in iChat, on which I was logged in as well.

Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone is a free download on the App Store. Check it out and let us know what you think!

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Remember when you had to click on an application to make it active, and hit refresh in order to find out if anything new had happened? It’s been a long while now, since most desktop programs can run in the background and notify you when something requires your attention. The iPhone approximates that same functionality via the newly introduced push notification features, though apps aren’t actually running in the background, so special support is required from app developers to enable it.

As far as I’m concerned, push has already been a game-changer. My iPhone is now my dedicated IM client, lets me monitor any and all Blue Jays games no matter where I am, and keeps me on-task with my to-do list. But that’s not all. Thanks to a new app called Prowl ($2.99, iTunes link), my iPhone can keep me abreast of pretty much anything, via my Mac and a useful app many will already be familiar with, Growl.

Growl, in case you aren’t aware, is an open notification platform for OS X that supports a wide variety of applications. Basically, it alerts you via an on-screen pop-up and/or sound when one of its supported applications receives a message, finishes a task, and so on. So, for example, using a Mail plugin, I receive a Growl notification whenever I get an email, or when I’m mentioned or receive a DM on Twitter via Tweetie’s built-in Growl support. It’s a very handy tool to have, especially if you keep your dock hidden, as I do, or if you’re working with many different applications on multiple screens.

Now you can receive Growl notifications on your iPhone, too, in the form of push notifications, thanks to Prowl. I can’t even begin to explain how useful this could potentially be, depending on your usage. Already, I have it set up to notify me of new mail (which works better than Apple’s wn push mail, in my opinion, because it allows me to see the sender and some content of the received message), let me know when I receive new @ replies and DMs via Twitter (which I can then check out in Tweetie), and alert me whenever Transmission finishes downloading or seeding a torrent file.

Not only can Prowl alert you of whatever Growl can, but it can also receive custom alerts sent from a web interface. When you set up Prowl, you sign up for an account that’s necessary for syncing Growl on your computer with Prowl on your iPhone. Using that same login, you can go to the Prowl web site and send yourself messages. Any applicable content in that message will be automatically hot-linked, like emails and phone numbers. Very handy for sending a contact number to yourself for future reference.

Prowl is potentially the most effective application of push I’ve yet seen on the iPhone platform, especially if you’re already using Growl (which you should be). The best part is that it’s limited only by Growl itself, which is infinitely expandable, so long as developers keep supporting it. Probably the best $3 I’ve ever spent in the App Store.

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Slowly but surely, push notification apps are trickling into the App Store, as you can see from this handy little list by AppAdvice.com. Some of them are less than impressive, since they offer strange niche functions that I could never picture myself actually using. Beejive IM came out last week, though, which has become by far my most-used app since, and now Remember The Milk (Free with RTM Pro account, iTunes link) is available, as of today, with push features.

A to-do app with push might just be the thing I need to get me to buckle down and actually use a to-do app with some kind of consistency. Sure, RTM for the iPhone requires that you have a Pro account with their service, which is a $25-a-year subscription, but I actually already have one from when the app was first released. Yes, I signed up many months ago and haven’t exactly taken great advantage of that subscription since, but version 1.1.0 gives me reason to believe I may actually begin to get my money’s worth.

The problem, for me, with to-do apps (whether they be desktop, web-based, or iPhone apps), is that for them to actually work, you kind of have to check them consistently. Sure, most allow you to send email alerts when a task’s due date is approaching, but my email comes in with such frequency that it’s very easy for a task reminder or two to slip through the cracks as I tackle more urgent messages. Now, RTM for iPhone will send me push notifications in the form of text alerts whenever a task’s due date is approaching, at a time determined by me that I set up via the web through my account settings. Audio alerts are oddly omitted from this version, but developers say that the addition is included in the next update.

Is it worth the $25 price of admission, when there are probably one-time purchase apps with similar features on the way as we speak? That depends on your to-do tasking practices. If, like me, you like the added convenience of having your list accessible from any Internet-connected platform (and offline, too, via Google Gears), then RTM, with its attendant free iPhone app, might be what you’re looking for. You could also hold out for Appigo ToDo’s push features, which are included in an update that’s already been submitted to Apple. Either way, if you’re looking for some way to get things done more efficiently, this implementation of Apple’s push could be the most practical yet.

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The big day is only a week away, and it looks like no one is more keenly aware of that fact than Apple. Those enrolled in the iPhone Development Program received an email late today telling them to go download a developer preview version of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) in order to further test Apple’s push notification servers. Included in the email was a special code redeemable via iTunes.

Unlike the AP News app, no specific expiration date is specified for the AIM preview, though the email does state that the app can only be installed on iPhones using the 3.0 GM Seed. Most likely, next week when everyone upgrades to the full, final version of 3.0, this version of AIM will no longer be operational.

The beta app doesn’t boast any new feature additions or functionality beyond the push notifications, but they are definitely impressive. Unlike with AP News, when we were basically at the mercy of its schedule in terms of receiving pushed content, it’s fairly easy to engineer a received message in AIM. I tested it out with a number of people, including myself, just to make sure things were running smoothly, and they definitely were.

New messages bring up a notification window, with the message and the user name of the sender, and play the AOL chime that has become permanently associated with the AIM brand identity. The app icon is also badged with the number of unread messages, and it does increase if more than one message is received. New messages replace old ones, in terms of the content of the notification window. I can see rapid-fire AIM conversations becoming very aggravating unless they introduce some way to customize how you receive consecutive messages from the same user.

Potentially annoying or not, this true test of push notification in a more user-controlled setting is very promising. If possible, I’m now more impatient for next Wednesday to arrive, after which point I’ll be relieved for exactly two minutes before I begin anticipating next Friday and the official release of the 3G S. Heady times for Apple fans.

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